UPHEAVAL IN THE EAST: SOVIET UNION

UPHEAVAL IN THE EAST: SOVIET UNION; Force as a Last Resort: Armed Power Salvages Moscow's Facing Authority

By BILL KELLER, Special to The New York Times

Published: January 29, 1990

MOSCOW, Jan. 28—
It now seems clear that the main reason that the Soviet military stormed Baku on the morning of Jan. 20 was to prevent the Communist government of the Azerbaijan republic from falling, much as several national Governments in Eastern Europe have fallen in recent months under the pressure of popular uprisings.

Yet there was little real Communist power to save in Azerbaijan. The breakdown of Soviet rule in the southern republic had begun in earnest two years earlier, and was virtually complete by the time that Army and Interior Ministry troops crashed into Baku, the republic's capital.

The story of Azerbaijan's collapse is a chronicle of missed signals and misjudgments. The costliest blunder was the failure to see the weakness of the Communist hold on the republic, and how quickly it could be washed away by a flash flood of nationalism.

What happened in Azerbaijan is not necessarily a taste of what awaits the Kremlin in other republics. Azerbaijan's Middle Eastern temperament, its centuries-old ethnic friction with neighboring Armenia, its clannish politics and its squalid rural poverty made it especially volatile.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders have repeatedly said they would not use troops to contain a peaceful challenge, like that mounted by the separatist movement in Lithuania.

But the turmoil in Azerbaijan has undermined one of Mr. Gorbachev's basic articles of faith: that the Kremlin can hold together this union of proud nationalities by means other than force and intimidation.

The following chronology of events in Azerbaijan includes major turning points over the last two years and some new details of the days of bloody violence. It is based on interviews with leaders of the Azerbaijani Popular Front - with Azerbaijanis not active in the front, with Armenian refugees fleeing attacks by Azerbaijanis in Baku, and with Soviet journalists. Official statements by the Kremlin and by Soviet legislators briefed last week on the situation were also used. An Old Grievance Is Vigorously Revived FEBRUARY 1988: Inspired by Mr. Gorbachev's promise of greater political license, Armenian nationalists in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan revived an old grievance. For almost two years, they had pressed a campaign to assert Armenian sovereignty in the region, where 80 percent of the population is Armenian even though the territory lies completely within Azerbaijan. This time, the campaign boiled over.

On Feb. 20, after a week of virtually nonstop mass demonstrations, Armenian members of the region's governing council approved a resolution appealing for its transfer to Armenian jurisdiction.

The vote should have sent a message to the Kremlin: that blood is thicker than ideology. The local officials are Communist Party members appointed long before the advent of competitive elections, and all the logic of totalitarian rule says that such people do not defy the Kremlin. It was the first clear signal of the weakness of Moscow's grip on the machinery of power in Azerbaijan.

In February, the authorities first acknowledged a growing tide of refugees driven by the tension over the territorial dispute. Azerbaijanis fled from Armenia in such numbers that on March 1, the government of Azerbaijan established a commission to deal with them.

In time, half a million people fled the two republics, driven by threats, vandalism, assault, dismissals from their jobs, or simple fear. They returned home full of rage and spilled out stories of atrocities. Various attempts to resettle them were poorly financed, slow to start, and soon neglected.

On Feb. 27, anti-Armenian riots broke out in Sumgait, a Caspian Sea petrochemical port near Baku. Several aspects of the horrifying events formed a pattern that would be repeated.

First, the unrest was set off by the arrival of embittered refugees, in a state of near-hysterical anger.

Second, the local police and politicians did not intervene, either out of impotence before the mob, or sympathy with it, or, as some conspiracy theorists maintain, because the local party leaders believed that the violence would discredit polititical changes by the Kremlin, changes they feared might jeopardize their own power.

Third, Moscow did not send troops until the riots raged for three days. Soviet officials said later that this was partly the result of bad intelligence information from local officials, and partly Mr. Gorbachev's own distaste for the use of force and his mistrust in the ability of Soviet troops to intervene surgically. A New Leader Wields a Heavy Hand MAY 21, 1988: Moscow brought in Abdul-Rakhman K. Vezirov as the new party leader in Azerbaijan. He was an outsider, with years abroad as Ambassador to Pakistan and to Nepal.

At first, he seemed a natural choice, a man with Mr. Gorbachev's confidence, a trained diplomat independent of the Azerbaijani political machine. But he was also a man with little personal appeal, one who spoke his native tongue badly. He is ''a monologist,'' said a man who knew him. ''He is incapable of listening.''